TiVo lays off 5 hardware engineers but says it won’t abandon its boxes

With only two engineers left, TiVo will lean on third-party designers.

Something’s afoot at TiVo, and it started today with five layoffs. Wired reporter Roberto Baldwin had the initial report, claiming that five layoffs from the company’s hardware division left “a skeleton crew of two engineers,” indicating an official exit from the hardware business. Baldwin's sources within TiVo may have been overstating the situation, though.

Subsequent reports feature comments from TiVo’s Vice President of Corporate Communication Steve Wymer, where he emphatically denies that TiVo is abandoning hardware. What Wymer doesn’t do, however, is deny the layoffs. An update to the original Wired piece indicates that TiVo will work with third-party designers for subsequent hardware.

Further Reading

TiVo hardware has been a saga of gradual iterations, with each successive generation adding features and capabilities. Ars' Nathan Mattise reviewed the company's latest hardware, the TiVo Roamio, and had heaps of praise—after he went through the hellish setup process. At CES this year, TiVo didn’t have new consumer hardware, but instead met with network operators to discuss its new NDVR hardware, which moves the TiVo experience entirely to the cloud. Moving content recording, discovery, and delivery into the cloud has a lot of appeal for operators who want more control over viewers' content.

It is unclear, at this point, just what these layoffs really represent. The quick reaction by TiVo’s PR machinery indicates that the claim that it's exiting hardware altogether was a bit bold. It’s possible TiVo will be moving to a role not dissimilar to an ODM, where its customers are no longer end users but cable companies and other network partners. It could be that it'll simply be working with ODMs for hardware design, while focusing its efforts on improving the software and the service. For now, though, TiVo claims to be committed to the Roamio, its users, and its hardware.